Take the Mitsu

Album Review

Take the Mitsu is an almost entirely spontaneously improvised album of jazz mildly in honor of composer Toru Takemitsu, recorded by Indianapolis jazzers Mark Buselli and Claude Sifferlen. The album opens up with the songbook standard "My Ideal," before moving quickly into some more progressive numbers, with the more energetic "Bhutan," and the almost third stream "Syncretism." Buselli gets to stretch out a bit with his flugelhorn phrasing in the bluesy "Blullage," and the duo gets some nice interplay between horn and piano in Benny Golson's "Stablemates." "A Long Time Ago" mixes jazz with some of the aesthetics involved in prehistoric movie scoring, and "Sophia" is a simple, yet nostalgic, sort of tune (recorded for Buselli's daughter). After a nice exploration of the space between the notes in the title track (in honor of Takemitsu's aesthetic and musical philosophy), the album finishes on a Hoagy Carmichael number, "The Nearness of You," but performed in a jazz-waltz form. Buselli's flugelhorn is a well-honed instrument, as he can move from style to style almost effortlessly (though there are some sparse areas in the midst of improvisations), and Sifferlen's piano has some flair in it that's worth hearing. The album might not be the most exciting work of jazz to come out this decade, but for a spontaneous recording that intentionally shies away from existing works, it's remarkably good.